Ava’s black Range Rover was parked in the driveway, but he couldn’t find her. He kept looking, wondering what Frank would think about what he was doing. Frank would say he was insane. And maybe he was; alcoholics, by definition, were insane. Then again, wasn’t love its own form of insanity? And what did Frank know about love?

Sebastian couldn’t find Ava; she had to be in some other part of the house. He sighed, disappointed, about to give up when he saw someone jogging up the road in front of Ava’s house—it was Ava, dressed in tight black running shorts and a matching midriff sports top, her long black hair tied back into a ponytail. Seeing her made the fist inside his chest unclench and finally relax.

She went in through a gate on the side of the yard and he lost sight of her, spotted her a moment later climbing the stairs. He lost her again, then quickly found her in the master bedroom suite she had, at one time, shared with her husband. She had already removed her running sneakers and socks. The deep red shade of nail polish on her toes matched that of her fingernails. Now she was removing her running top.

Sebastian looked away. Even though he had seen her naked before, his twice-a-week treks to this spot weren’t about indulging some pervy fetish. This was about getting to know her again, so he could take the next step.

His phone rang, its bleating sounding loud in the canyon. Sebastian started—he’d forgotten to mute the goddamn ringer. He did so, not even bothering to check the caller, shoved the phone in his pocket, and went back to waiting for Ava to return from the shower.

She did, several minutes later, now dressed in a pair of boy shorts and a tank, her long jet-black hair still damp. She propped up the pillows on her king-sized bed and then, from the nightstand, grabbed the same book she’d been reading all summer—a monstrously thick trade paperback on Winston Churchill. She picked up a pair of stylish reading glasses, got herself settled on the bed, and began to read.

She had never looked more beautiful to him.

His phone rang again, vibrating. He ignored it, thinking back to the day when he walked into court for a new trial with a new judge, who reviewed the case and agreed with his lawyer’s findings. You’re free to go, Mr. Kane.

To where? Sebastian wanted to say. To what? You took everything from me, and I have no way to get it back.

One of the great many tenets he’d learned in AA was to let go of the past. And he had. Took him a long time to do it, but he had said goodbye to Ava—not in person but to the Ava that existed in his mind, the Ava he had carried with him through prison and then later met doing what he was doing right now, watching her from afar. And now the past had come back to him. Demanded his full attention.